Midwest Food Bank

The Challenge

Midwest Food Bank is dedicated to sharing the love of Christ by alleviating hunger and malnutrition locally and throughout the world and providing disaster relief. Midwest Food Bank helps serve over three million people across 2,000+ pantries in the U.S and Canada through its aggregator extended network model.

Given this unique model, Midwest Food Banks searched for a volunteer management solution that could help address its main challenges:

• Integrate and sync volunteer activities with Salesforce
• Consolidate systems for volunteer coordination and help alleviate inefficiencies
• Reduce manual entry that consumed significant administrative time
• Validate parental consent and waiver completions in real-time

How We Helped

Golden’s Volunteer Management Platform: A Game-Changer

Seeking a solution, Midwest Food Bank partnered with Golden, a leading volunteer management platform tailored for food banks. Golden’s platform seamlessly integrated with Salesforce, providing a unified system to manage volunteer activities efficiently.​

• Significant Time Savings: By automating processes, each chapter saved approximately 400 administrative hours annually.
• Enhanced Data Capture: Achieved over 95% email capture rate, facilitating better communication and engagement.​
• Streamlined Compliance: Real-time validation of parental consents and waivers, ensuring safety and compliance.
• Efficient Disaster Response: Rapid mobilization of volunteers during emergencies through targeted communication.​

Before implementing Golden, Midwest Food Bank was allocating 100 hours a week on administrative tasks. Now their team has reduced these hours by 80%, spending only 20 hours a week on manual and administrative duties.

Empowering Local Chapters

Through Golden’s platform, Midwest Food Bank was better able to provide its affiliate partners with the ability to properly plan and engage its volunteers prior to their arrival onsite. Additionally, with 24/7 visibility on the website and app, volunteers of all ages could easily sign up for volunteer opportunities that interested them most.

Integrated Technology Helps Midwest Food Bank Achieve its Goals

As Midwest Food Bank searched for a new volunteer management platform, they required it to seamlessly integrate with its donor CRM, Salesforce. With Golden, Midwest Food Bank was able to achieve more than a unified database, they were able to achieve:

• Seamless Volunteer Management: Simplified sign-ups, scheduling, and tracking hours, which automatically syncs with Salesforce to eliminate manual data entry.
• Enhanced Data Accuracy: Real-time syncing ensures up-to-date and error-free volunteer information in Salesforce.
• Improved Reporting and Impact Measurement: Midwest Food Bank can generate custom reports in Salesforce to analyze volunteer trends and engagement.
• Better Communication and Engagement: Salesforce enables targeted emails and texts to volunteers, improving engagement and retention.
• Time and Cost Savings: Automating volunteer tracking and reporting reduces administrative workload and boosts efficiency.
• Grant and Donor Reporting: Integrated Salesforce dashboards provide insights on volunteer contributions for grant applications and donor relations.
• Compliance and Liability Verification: The integration ensures that signed Release of Liability waivers are securely stored and easily accessible in Salesforce for compliance and verification.

Midwest Food Bank’s collaboration with Golden exemplifies how a specialized volunteer management platform for food banks can revolutionize operations, enhance volunteer engagement, and amplify impact. By addressing administrative challenges and streamlining processes, they have fortified their mission to combat hunger and poverty effectively.​